As embarrassed as I can occasionally be about my rampant Anglophilia, I am unashamed of my obsessive fangirlism. Well, maybe not “unashamed”. More like “have come to terms with”. I am desperately uncool, but at 26, I’m okay with that. I am what the Brits might uncharitably call an “anorak” about many things, but whatever. [...]
I don’t write much, or even take photos much in London. It’s partly due to the fact that I am no longer alone–Psychic Roommate is with me now en route to Avignon–but also partly because I’m not a tourist here. Not quite, anyway.
Why this isn’t an option in Salzburg, I will never know.
In an attempt to spend down my euros before leaving Austria (I hate having spare change in multiple currencies–I still have about €0,69 in a piggy jar at home), I buy every prepackaged thing in the Vienna airport. (Der Flughafen, a word I adore.) Even their airport cappuccino is amazing, although I can’t say the [...]
I cannot decide whether the landscape of Austria looks familiar or like a fairytale. A bit of both, perhaps. At times I am reminded of New England and Pennsylvania Dutch country, and at others I’m thinking it’s MOTHERFUCKING AUSTRIA. No, it is the hills that are distinctly foreign and fairytale-ish, alternately covered in patches of [...]
As she is my Mum, I suppose she knows me best. But yeah, I really am an 8-year-old boy at heart, aren’t I?
Today and tomorrow are for music. I came to Austria for one purpose, and that was to fangirl Mozart. Is it strange to admit a crush on a dead genius? The irony of these days being for music is that I have broken my headphones on the way over and therefore cannot listen to any. [...]
I am out of my depth. Unlike Oxford, I came to Vienna to become verloren, to become lost. But I didn’t realize exactly how unmoored I would feel. Language barriers–normally never much trouble for me–suddenly seem insurmountable. I am passable in Spanish (once fluent, but now no longer), can get by in French, and can [...]
Oxford doesn’t feel like mine. It’s a funny thing to say about a city, but it’s true. It should perhaps be the funnier thing that I assume it should feel like mine, but I do. It’s the city which engendered Alice and Éowyn and Lyra–especially Lyra, dear Lyra–so I thought I would find a measure [...]
So I’m going to try and transcribe what I’ve handwritten in my journal about the past few days.
S. Jae-Jones, but JJ, if you please. Editrix at St. Martin's Press. Writer. Artist. Avid skydiver. And she abandons her mind to obscure arts.